QoS and network monitoring on Linksys consumer devices (Wireless Research Paper

QoS and network monitoring on Linksys consumer devices (Wireless Protocol 802.11e) - Research Paper Example Key words IEEE 802.11e, Diffserv IEEE 802.11, WLAN, Quality-of-Service (QoS) Introduction As technology advances, communication over a wireless network is becoming preferable over other forms of communication. The modern networks are designed in such a way that they support more sophisticated traffic as compared to traditional networks. The advanced features of modern networks enables various traffic such as web traffic, file sharing traffic, and email traffic (Evans & Filsfils, 2010). In recent time, sensitive traffic such as video and voice have been introduced to share common transmission medium. The use of this sensitive medium demands regulated and guaranteed services. Considering the above stated sensitive nature of the data being transmitted, the traffic on transit is susceptible to many communication obstacles. Among the obstacles the sensitive traffic being transmitted meet include Lack of bandwidth, Delay, Jitter, and Data loss. For better, Quality of service tools have bee n developed (Alvarez, 2006). This Quality of Service tools have been specifically designed to provide applications which enable consistent and guaranteed experience to the user. In broadband technology, IEEE 802.11 has become prevalent. This technology is often referred to as the wireless Ethernet basing on Medium Access protocol and the ability to provide transmission rates of up to 54 Mbps. To make the IEEE 802.11 more efficient, the technology has evolved to support quality of service. Consequently, there has been the emergence of the IEEE 802.11e. This research paper is aimed at discussing limitations of IEEE 802.11 standards, Quality of Service methodologies, IEEE 802.11e standards, and to expose existing weaknesses in the Quality of Services architectures. Overview of 802.11 WLANs and its QoS limitations Point coordination functions and distributed coordination functions are the major access functions of the IEEE 802.11 definitions of the MAC sub – layer. Basically, the access function of IEEE 802.11 is the distributed coordination function (DCF). During packet transmission using the IEEE 802.11 standards, the data is exposed to various vulnerabilities as discussed below. Delay (Latency) This is one of the characteristics of a wireless network that can be measured quantitatively. This is the measure of the time packets that are transmitted across a network form end – to – end. The units for measuring latency are fractions of seconds. Measurement of latency can be done either to a single source from a single source ( One-way) or round – trip, which involves measurement from the single source to the destination and back to the original source (Cisco, 2012). In cases where there is fast communication between the devices, the time taken for packet transmission is automatically very low, this is referred to as low latency. On the contrary, when the transmission of the packets takes significant amount of time to be transmitted, betw een the destination and the source, there is an indication that there is high latency on the network. Generally, the occurrence of latency depends on the location of the communicating computers and the available network infrastructure. Occurrence of delay is not point specific. It occurs at any point along the network. Thus delay is also referred to as end –